I have good news and not so good news. While the bacteria found in Billi’s urine at her last check has cleared, unfortunately her blood values didn’t improve. She is now officially in IRIS Stage IV (Google this if you’re unfamiliar), and the median life expectancy for this stage isn’t long. Initially she was feeling ok and compensating well, but last week her appetite drastically decreased. As we all know, food is life for Billi, so this was pretty distressing for me to see.

Kidney disease is progressive. Always. We can slow progression and manage symptoms associated with impaired function, but we can’t stop it completely and we can’t reverse it. Which sucks. Truly, deeply, horrendously, sucks. We’ve come a long way in how we manage kidney disease in cats (even within the last couple of years), so I have hope that in the future it may be different, but right now I don’t have any big saves. The name of the game is palliative care, and trying to maximize the number of good days we have left.

I’m trying to stay in the present and take this one day at a time, because my brain cannot comprehend what life is going to be like without her. Going to focus on being with Billi and savoring all the time we have left, so posts may be less frequent than they have been historically